Shortly after Mike Tomlin was named coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in January, he had dinner with star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
On the menu was how Tomlin, an unknown outsider, was going to win over a team that was expecting offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt or offensive line coach Russ Grimm to be tabbed as Bill Cowher’s successor.
The 35-year-old, first-time head coach chewed on what Roethlisberger had to say, and at spring minicamp he met with each player. He also debuted the “news,” a daily rundown of mistakes by Pittsburgh players that Tomlin goes over in front of the team. Among his first headliners was Roethlisberger.
The message was clear: The new coach in the Steel City didn’t have a heart of stone, but he had an iron will and nobody was going to bend it, not Roethlisberger and not the fans who had embraced Cowher for 15 years and Chuck Noll for 23 seasons before that, and been rewarded with five Super Bowl titles.
“I’ve been blessed to be around some great coaches and I have some great mentors in this business,” said Tomlin, whose big break came in 2001, when Tony Dungy hired him to be the Buccaneers’ defensive backs coach. “Everybody has a different perspective on what it is that we do, but one of the things that reverberated throughout everybody is be yourself and do it your way. That’s what I’ve done.”
Full Story: Tomlin’s style seems a good fit in Pittsburgh – [Boston Globe]
